Confluent Cloud is pay by usage (per GB in, per GB out, per GB stored), so its much pricier based on your org's usage. However, it is definitely feature rich.

- Doesn't expose metrics via JMX but does provide a nice tool called confluent control center for monitoring and managing kafka cluster - Built in and Managed Schema Registry

but - AFAIK they won't reveal cluster size or cluster version (except client compability). So, they do scaling and upgrades automatically. It's a double edged-sword but should work for lot of orgs.

- Overall, definitely a better product than aws msk.

Considering that Confluent actually develops the Open Source Kafka project, I expect these problems to be AWS only. Go for the real thing and don't give Bezos money for a crippled product.